Friday, July 13, 2012

Van Halen wrapped up the first leg of their “A Different Kind Of Truth” tour last month in New Orleans.

The band is taking the summer off before heading to Japan for a series of November shows; there are also rumors that VH are in talks with promoters to play Australia, as well.

“Truth” debuted at #2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart upon its release in February following first-week sales of 187,000 copies.

Billboard reports Van Halen are #6 on the mid-year Rock sales charts as “Truth” has sold 395,000 units in the States.

In a new Guitar World interview/cover story, Eddie Van Halen talks about what got the ball rolling on making the new album, the band’s first with David Lee Roth in 28 years.

“Wolfgang’s enthusiasm,” explains Eddie. “He was going, ‘Come on, come on!’ We went up to 5150 and started jamming. It felt like a comfortable old pair of shoes. Working with Dave again was like we had never left each other. It was that comfortable. We’ve known each other since high school. When you have old friends, five or six years can go by when you don’t see each other, but you just pick up where you left off.”

“We started recording at the studio at my house with just Alex, Wolfgang and me,” continued the guitar icon. “Basically it’s the same way we start any record. We went through our archives of stuff we had already written. Wolfgang picked out a bunch of tunes. ‘She’s the Woman’ was the first one. We started jamming on songs like ‘She’s the Woman’ and ‘Bullethead’ and reworked them.”

It was a united Van Halen right from the start.

“Dave was onboard from the beginning,” says Eddie. “I was already recording and engineering demos of ‘She’s the Woman,’ ‘Bullethead’ and ‘Let’s Get Rockin’, which is now ‘Outta Space.’ I sent Pro Tools files of recordings over to Dave, who was working over at Henson Studios, where he likes to record, which got him totally excited. He said, ‘Let’s get going!’”